A Flexible Scheme to Model the Cognitive Influence on Emotions in Autonomous Agents

Autonomous agents (AAs) are designed to embody the natural intelligence by incorporating cognitive mechanisms that are applied to evaluate stimuli from an emotional perspective. Computational models of emotions (CMEs) implement mechanisms of human information processing in order to provide AAs for a capability to assign emotional values to perceived stimuli and implement emotion-driven behaviors. However, a major challenge in the design of CMEs is how cognitive information is projected from the architecture of AAs. This article presents a cognitive model for CMEs based on appraisal theory aimed at modeling AAs' interactions between cognitive and affective processes. The proposed scheme explains the influence of AAs' cognition on emotions by fuzzy membership functions associated to appraisal dimensions. The computational simulation is designed in the context of an integrative framework to facilitate the development of CMEs, which are capable of interacting with cognitive components of AAs. This article presents a case study and experiment that demonstrate the functionality of the proposed models.